2 Ideas for Progression

[Stroker Ace]

1. Have Progression, Abilites and Spells from Faction and Trade Skills

Having progression just through leveling and gear kind of limits uniqueness of player characters. The more avenues you have to make your character different, the better in my opinion. Kind of like how WoW has race specific buffs, but do it on a broader scale. It might even be a good idea to give bonuses and abilities to every single race/class combination, kind of like Priests in WoW (and like the canceled Hero classes).

Examples:
Blacksmithing:
-Make Weapons and Armor
-Adds +Strength, +Stamina and +% max melee damage based on trade skill level
-Create armor, weapons and trinkets with unique, one of a kind abilities
-Abilities:
Trade Skill Level 50: Vicious Strike (Melee) - A devastating blow that deals normal damage, but leaves the target writhing in pain for 3 seconds (1 Min cool down)

Trade Skill Level 100: Heat Renitence (Passive) - Raises your maximum Fire Resistance by 10%

Trade Skill Level 150: Scorch (Magic) - A level scaling fire based nuke the leaves the target aflame for a short period of time (15 Sec cool down)

Trade Skill Level 200: Weapon Toss (Range) - Allows you to throw your 1 handed weapon to deal up to 75% of your max melee damage

Faction:
Random Evil Caster Faction:
-Items and Trade skill specific patterns (Like Aldor/Scryer)
-Your Melee/Spell/Ranged abilities deal additional shadow damage on top of their normal damage, based on your faction level.
-Holy and Light Spells Deal 5% more damage to you as they normally would.
-Abilities:
Blah Blah Blah

I'm sure you get the point.


2. Item and Gear Generation and Item Diversity

One thing I hate about most MMO's is the lack of stats and unique abilities on items. One of the games that had item generation correct was Diablo 2. The items had random stats, charges of certain abilities, magic find, auras, life and mana steal, summons, sockets, chance on hit/struck/kill/death/level up, scaling stats by character level, + to skills, damage shields, percentage based stat increases and so much more crap. They even had items with spells and abilities you couldn’t get from any class, unique to that item. The only issue with having a item system like this is building encounters around it. Which is a whole different discussion, and probably the most cumbersome job to do with making a MMO.

[Bloodfrost]

Actually that kinda makes sense in a way. Blacksmiths are by they're nature much stronger then the average man. Years of their trade usually ends up honing their muscles. Same reasoning could be used for other trades

Surprised no one's implemented this before to be honest. Though eq did somewhat. Only downside I would see is it would A.) End up being very hard to encode and keep balanced so classes don't get overpowered "See warrior with a nuke" B.) You would end up cookie cutter in a way anywho. Melee would all go for the physical ones etc

Still good idea Stroker

[Stroker Ace]

Originally Posted by Bloodfrost

Only downside I would see is it would A.) End up being very hard to encode and keep balanced so classes don't get overpowered "See warrior with a nuke" B.) You would end up cookie cutter in a way anywho. Melee would all go for the physical ones etc

Well, as I see it, each profession would have multiple abilites for each and every class. Same with faction. It could be possible to make it so a certian class build would have more efficiency with certian spells and abilites then another.

Take for example the 'Scorch' spell. A high intellect race/class with fire based synergies and gear would have a more powerful and efficient 'Scorch' then a Brute warrior race/class. The melee would have better efficiency with the 'Vicious Strike' and the 'Throw Weapon' ability, but it wouldn't suck to use them with a caster class. And with a progression set up like this it is possible to make classes like 'warriors' be able to make 'battle mages' or other hybrids not just through items and abilites but through faction and tradeskilling. Hell, maybe even questing if you can implement it right.

Having tradeskills with generic "only a certian class would benefit from the tradeskill items" is a very bad thing like Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Leatherworking in WoW. They have to have certian items that benefit every single class/build on an obtuse scale or there will always be cookie cutter selections. But you don't want to make consumables like WoW Alchemy, or you end up in a whole other shitstorm.

Progression needs to evolve in new MMO's or you are left with generic stagnant MMO #34. The first thing I look at when trying to play a MMO is class diversity and item generation. If those are reminesent and copy by numbers from older MMO's, I normally don't even bother with the game because I have already played the game before.